USA

Cultural and Educational Relations

Thursday، 30 March 2017 02:02 PM

AAA

On 1/12/2016, Egypt and the United States of America signed a landmark bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on cultural property protection. This is the first cultural property protection agreement between the United States and a country in the Middle East and North Africa region.

The Embassy in Washington exert prompt efforts to highlight Egypt's different cultural aspects on the U.S. arena to acquaint American citizens with ancient and modern Egyptian civilization, bridging cultural relations between the two peoples in a direct and positive manner, and through intensive cultural activities such as organizing cultural evenings or holding symposia with various American authorities at the mission premises. Following are the most important cultural activities conducted by the Embassy during the last period.

Several symposia and lectures are held at the Embassy premises, and attracts interest of the U.S. side and the American community as well. Such symposia and lectures deal with different topics that contribute to acquainting the Egyptian culture such as the Pharaonic civilization and, acquainting different aspects of ancient and modern Egyptian culture as well.

Within the framework of supporting this activity, the Embassy is concerned to hold meetings with different intellectual groups to identify Egypt's positions regarding various issues such as the situation in the Middle East and Egyptian-American relations, where the Embassy staff members give lectures and hold symposia on Egypt and its civilization, both at the embassy premises or at various schools and institutes, to answer their questions and queries. The mission is also keen to represent Egypt at any cultural event called to from the American universities and institutes.

The embassy participated in the inauguration of the "Tutankhamun" exhibition in San Francisco in June 2009, which had a positive echo for Egypt's image and promotion of community among the cultured circles .

The Embassy participates in the activities of Arab-American organizations that promote Arab culture and heritage. The embassy participated in the activities of a forum entitled "Debt 2007" organized by the Arab Center for Economic and Social Services in Detroit wherein it is considered the largest Arab-American cultural institutions in the United States.

The embassy also participated in the Arabesque Festival for Arab arts, held in Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington in February 2009. The festival is the first of its kind and mainly based on the organization of the important cultural status role in the American capital of Arab culture. The embassy organized an Egyptian day within the framework of the activities for the festival.

The embassy coordinates with various film festivals in the United States to ensure the representation of Egyptian cinema, documentary and fiction in the most important festivals, and Egypt participated with the film "Marcos and Cohen" in the Festival Sites "Arab" International which was held in Washington, along with some documentary films about Egypt, preparing for the Washington Film Festival held in October 2009, and Egypt was an active participant in it.

The cooperation includes joint work between Children's Museum in the city of Indianapolis to view the ancient Egyptian history and to support the new draft for Children's Museum in Cairo.

The Cultural Office of Egyptian Embassy takes care of the Egyptian students envoys to the United States, and holding meetings with their leaders to identify their problems and work to facilitate their task of study and follow-up their conditions, and conducts a number of cultural events.

The most important aspects of cooperation in the Joint Scientific Committee, where Egyptian and American scholars work together in joint activities as well as the cooperation framework between Egypt and the National Science Foundation, there are about 76 grant funding for joint cooperation between scientific institutions, Egyptian and American counterparts.

In an effort from the Egyptian government (the Ministries of Communications and Higher Education) to develop expertise in the field of "nanotechnology" an accord was reached with IBM to establish a research center on Nanotechnology under which Egypt cooperates with the company in several projects in this area, this in addition to the existing cooperation with the National Institute of Health in the field of research programs and special grants for research training.